This episode features a bootleg recording of film historian Thomas Gunning delivering the lecture "Inventing the Moving Image (and then Forgetting It)" in June 2010 at the workshop On the Periphery of Cinema: Practices, Materials, Objects organized by Katja Müller-Helle and Alena J. Williams for the “Media of History – History of Media,” research group of the Universities of Weimar, Erfurt, and Jena in collaboration with “Senses – Technology – Mise-en-Scene: Media and Perception,” research group of the University of Vienna. Alena Williams introduces and moderates the lecture, Volker Pantenburg gives the response, and discussion features questions from Lorenz Engell, Stefan Andriopoulos, Wolfgang Struck among others. Professor Gunning is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago.

Cigarettes, cycling, gawking, gandering, and imbibing. These are a few of the forms of distraction or "distributed attention" that Petra Loeffler--a film and media scholar currently teaching media philosophy at Bauahus University -- discusses with us in this episode. Drawing examples from her recent book Distributed Attention: A Media History of Distraction, Dr. Loeffler explains the rise of distraction as a bourgeois pastime in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century, its transformation into an object of scientific fascination and mass entertainment during the nineteenth-century, and its persistence as an object of medical, political, and philosophical preoccupation in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries.

Music courtesy STEREO TOTAL -- creators of a carnivalesque delight for the ears.

Film and media theorist Steven Shaviro discusses postcinema, the meaning of the affective turn in the humanities, non-continuity in contemporary film cultures, digital technologies, neoliberalism, the place of politics in the academy, Harmony Korine's SPRING BREAKERS, and the aesthetics of Disney Stars gone bad. This discussion elaborates on Dr. Shaviro's lecture available as episode 11 of the CULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES podcast.

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This episode features film theorist Steven Shaviro's lecture "'Every time I try to Fly': Hamony Korine's Spring Breakers," held on Nov 22, 2013 at the Post-Cinematic Perspectives conference (organized by Dr. Lisa Åkervall and Dr. Chris Tedjasukmana of the Free University) in Berlin, Germany. Episode #12 features an additional in-depth interview with Dr. Shaviro about this lecture and topics including post-cinema, neoliberalism, non-continuity, and digital media.

In this podcast DJ Ripley (aka Dr. Larisa Mann) draws on her experience as a DJ, ethnographer, and student of public policy to examine how the history and present-day cultures of Jamaican street dance challenge familiar conceptions of artistic control and cultural appropriation. Tracing out political, economic, and technological itineraries that traverse US-American and Jamaican music cultures, DJ Ripley offers a genealogy of distinct (and intertwined) remix cultures as they develop at the margins of liberal jurisprudence and outside corporate control. The resulting analysis upsets political conceptions as diverse as the creative commons, copyleft, and development policies aimed at supporting art in the developing world.

Another Cultural Technologies Bootleg: This episode features German philosopher and social theorist Juergen Habermas's 2010 lecture on "'The Political': The Rational Meaning of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology" held at NYU. Habermas unpacks the merits and shortcomings of Carl Schmitt's concept of the political and flaws in Schmitt's account of the relation between European secularization and the rise of political liberalism. Excerpted from the website of "The Power of the Relgion in the Public Sphere," where complementary lectures by Cornel West, Charles Taylor, and Judith Butler may also be found. For transcripts of Habermas's talk, get a copy of the published collection of essays based on the conference. Oh, and if you missed the last podcast featuing an interview with John McCormick on "Carl Schmitt and Technology," give it a listen too.

Episodes on Foucault, biopolitics, German media theory, and visual culture coming down the pipe in the next few months. Stay tuned.

Another Cultural Technologies Bootleg: This episode features a chat among French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, media theorist Mark B. N. Hansen, and literary critic W. J. T. Mitchell on the work of German media theorist Friedrich Kittler, following which Stiegler muses about time, technology, love, and death in the age of electronic media. And Hansen chimes in about Amazon algorithms stalking his desires. (Original recording took place in Mark Hansen's and W. J. T. Mitchell's 2004 media theory course at the University of Chicago.)

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I recommend subscribing or dowloading the podcast file via ITUNES or the RSS FEED. Alternately, click on the in-screen player to the right or download the file directly here.

Music courtesy STEREO TOTAL -- creators of a carnivalesque delight for the ears.

The image is an old school flyer made by Katarzyna Okinczyc on the occasion of a visit by Stiegler to Northwestern University that same year.

Literary critic and theorist of visual culture WJT Mitchell talks to us about his classic book Iconology, as well the fear of images, John Locke, digital media, ideology, the life of images, images as life, and more.

For more on visual culture today, consider checking by the "Now! Visual Culture" conference being held at NYU in late May, where WJT Mitchell, myself, and a variety of scholars and artists will be giving talks. More info here.

.....................I recommend subscribing or dowloading the podcast file via ITUNES or the RSS FEED. Alternately, you can play via the in-screen player below or download the file directly here.

Music courtesy STEREO TOTAL -- creators of a carnivalesque delight for the ears.